NBA: Mike D’Antoni hire will raise ire of Lakers fans

The New York Knicks got better as soon as Mike D’Antoni resigned as head coach last March, but just a few months later, the Lakers hired D’Antoni to right their ship instead of bringing back Phil Jackson.

Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn’t to most Lakers fans, which should make Celtics fans happy.

D’Antoni is recovering from knee surgery, so he doesn’t plan to make his Lakers debut until today against Houston, a week after L.A. hired him to replace Mike Brown. The next time someone insists that preseason records don’t mean anything, tell them about Brown. His 1-4 start to the regular season probably wouldn’t have gotten him fired if the Lakers also hadn’t gone 0-8 in the preseason.

Celtics fans wish D’Antoni had never left New York. The Knicks were only 18-24 last season until he resigned, then went 18-6 under Mike Woodson for the remainder of the regular season. This year, Woodson coached the Knicks to a 6-0 start before they lost at Memphis Friday despite the absence of Amar’e Stoudemire, who is expected to be sidelined for six to eight weeks after undergoing left knee surgery.

New York beat the Sixers twice in the early going.

“I’m not going to overreact to two losses to New York,” Sixers coach Doug Collins said while his team visited Boston, “because I think right now arguably they could be playing as well as anybody in the East. If Miami is 1, then they’re 1-A.”

The Celtics have had a stranglehold on the Atlantic Division, winning it five years in a row, but the Knicks are determined to capture their first division title since 1994. That’s so long ago, Marcus Camby, the Knicks’ 38-year-old reserve big man, was a freshman at UMass.

UMass’ appearance in the 1996 NCAA Final Four was vacated because Camby accepted illegal gifts from agents, but John Calipari still did one of his best coaching jobs that season. The Minutemen and Kentucky were clearly the two best teams in the tournament, but they faced each other in the semifinals because the NCAA didn’t rank the No. 1 seeds beyond their regionals back then. Kentucky led UMass by only three points with 62 seconds left before pulling away for an 81-74 victory to avenge a November loss to the Minutemen. Kentucky then beat Syracuse in the final.

That Kentucky team, coached by Rick Pitino, had nine players who went on to play in the NBA, including five with the Celtics — Antoine Walker, Tony Delk, Walter McCarty, Ron Mercer and Wayne Turner. Others who reached the NBA were Derek Anderson, Mark Pope, Jeff Sheppard and Nazr Mohammed. Walker, Delk, McCarty, Mercer, Anderson and Mohammed were all first-round picks.

Camby was the only Minuteman from that 1996 team to play in the NBA. Few would have predicted that the 6-foot-11 Camby, who battled injuries throughout his career, and Mohammed would outlast the others in the NBA. Mohammed, a 6-foot-10 freshman center on that 1996 team, won another NCAA title at Kentucky in 1998 and an NBA championship with San Antonio in 2005. This season, Mohammed, 35, comes off the bench for the Bulls, his eighth NBA team, and Monday night he played six scoreless minutes against the Celtics.

Big men obviously last a long time in the NBA.

Camby hasn’t done much in New York this season, but Carmelo Anthony has averaged 23.3 points and 7.4 rebounds while shifting from small forward to power forward in Stoudemire’s absence. Reserve guard J.R. Smith, who signed with the Knicks in February after playing in China during the lockout, has averaged 16.7 points and shot 63.6 percent from 3-point land. Jason Kidd has not made New Yorkers forget about Jeremy Lin, but he has been a steadying influence in the backcourt. Raymond Felton plays the point, and Kidd plays some sort of hybrid guard.

After two years in retirement, former Celtic Rasheed Wallace has averaged 7 points and 3.3 rebounds in limited action for New York. Those numbers aren’t great, but the Celtics would take them from Darko Milicic or Jason Collins.

The Celtics don’t play the first of their four games against the Knicks this season until Jan. 7 in New York. Stoudemire may be back by then, but the Celtics should have Avery Bradley back by then as well. An intensified Boston-New York rivalry can’t be a bad thing.

In past years, the Celtics, Charlotte Bobcats and Philadelphia provided players to the Maine Red Claws of the NBA Development League, but this year only the Celtics do.

“That’s huge,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “We have control over how it’s run. Mike (Taylor, Maine coach) came down and spent the entire preseason and training camp with us. They’re running a lot of the stuff we do. They’re running our defensive schemes. I think it’s terrific.”

Rivers would like to see each NBA team have its own D-League affiliate, the way it works in the NHL. This year, NBA veterans can play in the D-League on rehab assignments. Celtics guard Avery Bradley, who underwent surgery on both shoulders, may do that once he’s ready to play again. Bradley played briefly in Portland as a rookie after undergoing ankle surgery and missing most of preseason. The 6-foot-2 guard averaged 17.1 points, 5.2 assists and 4.8 rebounds while shooting 37 percent on 3-pointers in nine games before returning to Boston.

“At times, I was kind of disappointed I was down there,” he admitted, “but after a while, I had to focus on what was important, and that was me getting better.”

Bradley offered some advice to rookies Fab Melo and Kris Joseph, whom the Celtics sent to Maine last week.

“Don’t go down there like it’s punishment,” Bradley said. “They’ve got to go down there with the attitude of getting better and make the most of it. Go down there and work hard every single day so they can improve, and when they get called up, be ready if their name is called here.

“I learned a lot. I was coming off an injury so it was more of me getting that confidence back, and I feel it’s the same for them. They haven’t been playing, if you think about it, since college, really, like consistent minutes.”

Maine filled out the rest of its roster through the D-League draft and free agent signings, including forward Micah Downs, whom the Celtics released during preseason.

The Celtics will be happy to see Lawrence Frank when they visit the 1-9 Detroit Pistons at 7:30 tonight, but only in part because it gives them a chance to renew acquaintances with their assistant coach of two years ago. Mostly, they’ll be glad to see him because he coaches the NBA’s worst team and they should have a good chance to chalk up a victory.

The Pistons got off to a franchise-worst 0-8 start under Frank before beating the Sixers Wednesday. To Frank, going 0-8 was too early to panic. Three years ago, he coached the Nets to an 0-16 start before he was fired. The Nets went on to lose two more games to set an NBA record for worst start before they finally won one.

So 0-8 was nothing to Frank, and he insists on bringing along Andre Drummond slowly against the wishes of most Pistons fans. The 19-year-old rookie center from UConn collected 22 points and eight rebounds in only 20 minutes Monday in a loss to Oklahoma City, but he sat out the entire third quarter. Two nights later, he played only 11 minutes and had six points and two rebounds.

Drummond helped St. Thomas More of Connecticut win a national prep school championship, then spent a year at UConn before declaring for the NBA Draft. The Pistons took him with the ninth pick last June.

Prior to this season, Detroit’s worst start was 0-7 in 1962-63 and in 1979-80. The Pistons fired Dick Vitale as coach shortly after their 0-7 start in 1979, but Vitale landed on his feet as an ESPN sportscaster.

The Pistons are young with a league-high six players with three or fewer seasons of NBA experience, and they played their first eight games against the more difficult Western Conference. Greg Monroe has played well for Detroit, but Rodney Stuckey made only one of his first 23 shots this season.

Wednesday, the Pistons limited the 76ers to 76 points — how appropriate — and Philadelphia shot only 29.4 percent, the lowest percentage by any team at Wells Fargo Center since the building opened in 1996.

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